US to probe Harvard University's admission process after racism complaints from Indian-Americans

FirstPost

New York: US President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to probe a complaint by four Indian-American organisations and other Asian groups that Harvard University discriminates against students from the communities in its admission process.

Justice Department Spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said on Wednesday the department wants to investigate the "administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations in May 2015 that the prior Administration left unresolved".

Flores said, "The complaint alleges racial discrimination against Asian-Americans in a university's admission policy and practices."

The Global Organisation of Persons of Indian Origin (Gopio), National Federation of Indian-American Associations, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, and BITS Sindri Alumni Association of North India were among the 64 Asian groups that jointly filed the federal complaint.

The complaint said: "Many Asian-American students who have almost perfect SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores, top one percent GPAs (Grade Point Average), plus significant awards or leadership positions in various extracurricular activities have been rejected by Harvard University and other Ivy League Colleges while similarly situated applicants of other races have been admitted."

SAT is one of the common entrance exams for college admission.

Though officially the affirmative action programmes are meant to aid African American and Latino students, in reality the quota system - similar to reservations in India - has expanded to also helps white students at the expense of Indian and other Asian students.

To ensure diversity, elite universities set academic standards for Asian students that are higher than that for even whites to prevent high-scoring Asians dominating the universities if admissions were based solely on merit.

A study by a Princeton University academic found that Asian-American students had to score 140 points more than whites in the SAT to gain admission to elite universities.

If a comparison is to be made to the Indian situation, Asians would be classified as "most forward" over the "forward" category. [MORE]

ACLU Asks Court To Force Government To Fight Fairly In FOIA Lawsuit Over Drone Strike Docs

TechDirt

The ACLU is headed to the Second Circuit Appeals Court, hoping to force the DOJ to be more... realistic about the government's drone strike operations in Pakistan. It's an FOIA lawsuit, with the ACLU seeking drone documents and being told -- in so many black bars -- that this publicly-acknowledged program is too secret to disclose.

The ACLU goes into this battle fighting blind:

In August 2016, the government blacked out a court ruling against government secrecy (yes, really), hiding from the public its reasons for why the ruling should remain secret. Then, it also hid its reasons for appealing that ruling to a higher court.

The DOJ argues the Pakistan drone strike program has never been officially acknowledged or disclosed. Going from there, it argues it shouldn't have to turn over the information the ACLU is requesting. But, as the ACLU points out, there's plenty of public knowledge about the program's existence. From the ACLU's filing [PDF]: [MORE]

New Book - "Chokehold: Policing Black Men." An unyielding justice system built for the oppression of blacks

WashPost

My first exposure to Paul Butler’s writing was at a legal conference in 1995. I volunteered at the last minute to review a law review article of his when the person assigned to the paper could not attend the meeting. In the now-famous piece, Butler detailed the harsh criminal sentencing blacks face. He reviewed the centuries-old practice of nullification — in which juries vote not guilty because they think a law is unfair — and boldly encouraged jurors to nullify in cases involving blacks accused of low-level drug offenses. When I finished, I scribbled, “Well done” and “Tenure?” on the first page. After publication, the article generated a firestorm of controversy, including calls for Butler’s job.

With “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” his new book, Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men. With this performance, though, Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University, layers in statistics, quotes from academics, rap lyrics, research findings and personal narratives. It’s a raucous mix, drawing on a range of voices, including Michelle Alexander, Susan Sontag, the movie “The Mack,” Derrick Bell, James Comey, Black Star, Ronaldinho Gaucho, Michel Foucault, Langston Hughes and Touré.

In Butler’s usage, the chokehold, the sometimes fatal neck lock police use to coerce submission, is a metaphor for understanding how racial oppression functions in the U.S. justice system. The chokehold is the invisible fist of the law, a shapeshifter that represents iterations of racial oppression, including slavery, Jim Crow, racial profiling and mass incarceration — and all the other ways the law works to keep black men down. “Efforts to fix ‘problems’ such as excessive force and racial profiling are doomed to fail,” Butler writes. The system works as it was designed to work: The chokehold persists, regardless of the century, the race of the president or good intentions. Butler’s goal is to define, describe and ultimately dismantle the chokehold’s grip. [more]

ACLU investing millions of dollars in Florida to restore ex-felons’ voting rights

Wash Post

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has stepped up its political engagement as its Trump-era membership has swelled, is getting behind a campaign to end Florida’s felon disenfranchisement law by changing the state Constitution. The decision will put substantial financial and activist resources behind an ongoing campaign to put a “Voter Restoration Amendment” on the November 2018 ballot.

“It’s going to be at least [a] $5 million commitment, maybe more,” said Faiz Shakir, the ACLU’s national political director, in an interview. “We’ll build through the end of the year, and to get the signatures we need to get on the ballot, we’re looking at a million.”

The voter restoration campaign is one of the most ambitious outgrowths of the ACLU’s “people power” project, announced four months ago with a rally in Florida. The idea of bringing new ACLU members and donors into grass-roots politics was on display that day, as local organizers walked around the college sports arena the ACLU had chosen for the launch, gathering signatures for the voter restoration effort.[MORE]

Black women picking up firearms for self-defense

Detroit News

Sitting in a classroom above a gun range, a woman hesitantly says she isn’t sure she could ever shoot and kill someone, even to protect herself. Couldn’t she just aim for their leg and try to maim them?

Her instructor says self-defense is not about killing someone, but is instead about eliminating a threat.

If the gun gets taken away by a bad guy, the instructor says, “I promise you they’re not going to be having any sympathy or going through the thought process you are.”

Gently she adds that if the student isn’t comfortable with the lethal potential of the gun, buying one might not be for her.

Marchelle Tigner is on a mission: to train at least 1 million women how to shoot a firearm. She had spent no time around guns before joining the National Guard. Now, as a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, she wants to give other women of color the training she hadn’t had.

“It’s important, especially for black women, to learn how to shoot,” Tigner said, noting that black women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence. “We need to learn how to defend ourselves.”

It’s hard to find definitive statistics on gun ownership, but a study by the Pew Research Center released this month indicated that just 16 percent of “non-white women” identified themselves as gun owners, compared with about 25 percent of white women. Other Pew surveys in recent years have shown a growing acceptance of firearms among African-Americans: In 2012, one found that less than a third of black households viewed gun ownership as positive; three years later, that number had jumped. By then, 59 percent of black families saw owning guns as a necessity.

A recent study by gun-rights advocate and researcher John Lott showed that black women outpaced other races and genders in securing concealed carry permits between 2000 and 2016 in Texas, one of the few states that keep detailed demographic information.

Philip Smith founded the National African American Gun Association in 2012 during Black History Month to spread the word that gun ownership was not something reserved for whites. He figured it would ultimately attract about 300 members, a number achieved in its first month. It now boasts 20,000 members in 30 chapters across the country.

“I thought it would be the brothers joining,” Smith said. Instead, he found something surprising — more black women joining, most of them expressing concerns about living either alone or as single parents and wanting to protect themselves and their homes.

In recent months, he said politics also have emerged as a reason why he finds more blacks interested in becoming gun owners.

“Regardless of what side you’re on, in the fabric of society right now, there’s an undertone, a tension that you see that groups you saw on the fringes 20 years ago are now in the open,” he said. “It seems to me it’s very cool to be a racist right now, it’s in fashion, it’s a trend.”

On top of that, the shootings of black men and boys around the country have left Smith and others concerned that racism can make a black person a perceived threat, even when carrying a firearm legally.

“The pain that I initially feel for Philando Castile is the same pain I felt for Alton Sterling or Trayvon Martin and the list goes on and on and on,” Smith said.

He and his organization take pains to coach members on what to do when stopped by police, but not everyone is comforted.

“It’s disheartening to think that you have everything in order: Your license to carry. You comply. You’re not breaking the law. You’re not doing anything wrong. And there’s a possibility you could be shot and killed,” said Laura Manning, a 50-year-old payroll specialist for ADP from Atlanta. “I’m not going to lie. I’m just afraid of being stopped whether I have my gun or not.”

At the training session in Lawrenceville, just outside Atlanta, about 20 students gathered on a recent Saturday morning to go over basic safety lessons and instructions. They started with orange plastic replica guns as Tigner demonstrated proper stance and grip. They are taught not to put a finger on the trigger until it’s time to shoot and to keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Tigner plays to their protective instincts by telling them always to know what is beyond their target so they don’t accidentally shoot a young child or another innocent bystander.

After about an hour in the classroom, the women walked downstairs and into the Bull’s Eye Indoor Gun Range. Some flinched as the crack of gunfire blasted from a series of bays. They were each shown how to load a magazine and given the chance to do it themselves — several of them struggling to get the bullets into the spring-loaded magazine with their long fingernails. Then they took turns firing a Glock 19 semi-automatic 9mm at targets about 5 yards down range.

“The bad guy’s dead. He’s not getting back up,” Tigner tells one student who beams with pride as they look over a target riddled with bullet holes.

Jonava Johnson, another student, says it took her a long time to decide to get a gun. For years she was afraid of them after an ex-boyfriend from high school threatened her and shot and killed her new boyfriend in front of her. She was just 17.

Flash forward about 30 years and her daughter was sexually assaulted in their home. At the time, she thought about getting a gun for protection but decided to get a guard dog instead. But she has since changed her mind.

“I think that’s the way it’s always been in the black community: It was never OK for us” to own a gun, said Johnson, 50. But now? “I hope I never have to kill anybody, but if it comes down to me or my children, they’re out.”

Washington state courts may shield non-white immigrants' status amid Trump fears

Guardian 

The assault took place in March. Ariella and her family were new arrivals to the US, but her husband didn’t know her real reasons for coming: her secret conversion to a religious group that was brutalized in their home country. Ariella had already filed for asylum.

When her husband found out, he screamed that he would kill her and began to rain blows down on her.

Police in Seattle charged her husband with felony harassment and two counts of domestic assault. And that’s when Ariella was confronted with an impossible choice: safety from her husband, or safety from the risks of revealing the particulars of her immigration status in open court.

Ariella is far from alone in facing such a choice. But that could soon change in the state of Washington, where a groundbreaking effort is under way to limit what juries hear about a witness’s immigration status. Prosecutors and immigration rights activists say the information can bias jurors and discourage immigrants, especially the undocumented, from using the legal system.

In June, the state supreme court agreed to consider a unique proposal: a new rule making immigration status inadmissible in court “unless status is an essential fact to prove an element of a criminal offense or to defend against the alleged offense or to show bias or prejudice of a witness”.

The rule, first proposed several years ago, would make Washington the first state in the country to place special limits on the mention of immigration status in criminal cases, and only the second state, after California, to impose similar limits in civil court. After hearing public arguments, the court could adopt, modify or reject the rule as early as September.

A study suggests that black Americans are unfairly fined by police

Economist 

WHEN a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot an unarmed black teenager dead three years ago, the killing set off outrage across America over violence committed by police. (Barack Obama’s Department of Justice concluded that the officer acted in self-defence.) But with greater public scrutiny of racial disparities in the use of force, better-disguised forms of inequality soon came to light as well. In March 2015 the department published a report on law enforcement in the city, which found that Ferguson’s criminal-justice system seemed to focus more on generating income for the government than on ensuring public safety. Nearly a quarter of the city’s general revenues came from criminal fines, fees and court costs. Moreover, black residents paid a far greater portion of these expenses than either their share of the population or their share of total crimes committed in Ferguson would indicate. The investigators concluded that the police had displayed “unlawful bias” against blacks.

react-text: 10186 The city appears to have heeded the Department of Justice’s message: fines and fees are down 77% from their peak in 2013. However, Ferguson was unlikely to be a unique outlier, and other cities engaging in similar practices might well have continued outside of the national spotlight. A new /react-text paper react-text: 10188 by Michael Sances of the University of Memphis and Hye Young You of Vanderbilt University published this month in the /react-text Journal of Politics react-text: 10190 found that Ferguson was indeed more of a rule than an exception. After examining data on 9,000 American cities, they found that those with more black residents consistently collected unusually high amounts of fines and fees—even after controlling for differences in income, education and crime levels. Cities with the largest shares (98%) of black residents collected an average of $12-$19 more per person than those with the smallest (0%) did. [MORE]

[white people who claim not to be racist can reveal &] Root out more City Hall racists: Taxpayers funded this orgy of prejudice

ChicagoTrib

It started with a complaint that a Chicago water department superintendent was using a city email address to conduct private firearms transactions. The inspector general's investigation turned up a lot more. Besides negotiating to buy or sell four guns and five cars, Paul Hansen traded racist emails with other supervisors and visited websites not related to his job — some containing sexually explicit materials — on "thousands of occasions" in a four-month period.

On city email, on a city computer, on city time.

He also forwarded a confidential workplace violence complaint filed by a subordinate to the employee accused in the complaint, according to IG Joseph Ferguson's report.

The top bosses who were looped in on some of those emails didn't put a stop to them. Sometimes they even joined in. Photos of naked women, jokes about fried chicken and watermelon, a picture of an African-American baby in a bucket described as a swimming pool, a message with the subject line "U Know U Be In Da Hood" — it was all just another day at the office at the Department of Water Management.

A trove of emails obtained earlier by the Tribune contained more of the same: a Confederate flag, a reference to "negro midgets," a crude joke about an employee needing "an inflatable doughnut on the chair" after a Gay Pride weekend. It's the kind of stuff you'd expect from fourth-grade boys with pigs for parents. And it was all happening on your dime, taxpayers.

Here's the other outrage: Nobody is surprised. The water department is larded with workers that somebody sent. In 2006, the department was the focus of a federal corruption trial that showed how then-Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration rewarded campaign workers with jobs, promotions and overtime. Daley's patronage chief, Robert Sorich, maintained the secret "clout list," rigged interviews and falsified documents to grease the hires.

In one of the emails, Hansen, the son of ex-44th Ward Ald. Bernie Hansen, bragged about his ability to "swing elections."

"The water department has been staffed at its highest levels by persons whose social or political connections were their chief or only qualification for the job," Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, chairman of the City Council's black caucus, said this week. "The emails have exposed that these individuals hold black Chicagoans in contempt."[MORE]

White LA County Sheriff Lee Baca Denied Bond Ahead of Conviction Appeal

SCV News

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has been denied bond pending the appeal of his conviction for obstructing a federal investigation into county jails.

In a ruling on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson said Baca did not “raise a substantial question likely to result in reversal or new trial” after the convicted ex-official introduced six grounds to support his case.

Earlier this year, Anderson sentenced Baca to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI probe into corruption and civil rights abuses at two county jails.

Baca said Anderson should have let him introduce evidence during retrial that he had aided a civil rights investigation into deputies accused of harassing minorities in Section 8 housing in Antelope Valley, as well as his work with the Office of Independent Review.

Baca also pointed to excluded evidence that he had ordered deputies to undergo training to defuse violent situations with inmates, as well as evidence related to his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

But Anderson said none of the six grounds merited a retrial and that Baca had not persuaded him that the appeal was “not for the purposes of delay.”

“Both individually and collectively, the court’s evidentiary rulings were not in error and did not deprive defendant of his constitutional right to present a defense,” Anderson wrote in the nine-page order.

Earlier this year, a jury found that over six weeks in August and September 2011, Baca conspired with his underlings to thwart an investigation into inmate abuse at two jails by hiding inmate-informant and violent felon Anthony Brown within the jail system.

The conspiracy began after jailers discovered a covert FBI operation into Men’s Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, after pulling a smuggled cell phone out of a potato bag from Brown’s belongings.

Baca has been ordered to surrender to authorities on July 25, but could renew his request for bond with the Ninth Circuit.

Anderson has presided over 10 cases connected to the scheme that has led to 21 convictions, according to U.S. Attorney Office in LA. Baca was the 10th member of the Sheriff’s Department convicted in the scheme. Former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka is also serving a five-year sentence in federal prison.

Elijah Cummings & John Conyers: An unchecked presidency is a danger to the Republic

From [Balt Sun] by Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, John Conyers. On Saturday, Oct. 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox because he refused to back down from his pursuit of the Watergate tapes. Nearly a half century later, President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because of, in the president’s own words, “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia.” And Wednesday, the president complained about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation; Mr. Trump said he “would have picked someone else” to run the Department of Justice had he known that was coming.

How Congress responds to moments like these matters. The differences between Congress’ response in 1973 and our response today are stark — and, frankly, disappointing. In 1973, the House Judiciary Committee had a serious and bipartisan response, subpoenaing and eventually releasing the Watergate tapes. The current Republican response has been tepid at best; they have not issued a single subpoena to the White House, and Speaker Paul Ryan defended Mr. Trump’s interference in the Russia investigation by assuring us that “he’s just new to this.”

As the senior Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, we believe it is critical that Special Counsel Robert Mueller be given the independence, time and resources to conduct a thorough investigation and report his findings to Congress. At the same time, as a co-equal branch of government, Congress must fulfill its constitutional duty to investigate the full range of Trump administration and Trump campaign actions.

Click to read more ...

President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'

The Hill

Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said Tuesday that the Latino advocacy organization made a tough decision to better reflect its mission last week when it dropped “La Raza” from its name.

The influential Latino civil rights organization changed its name to UnidosUS from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at its 49th annual conference.

Murguía told The Hill the decision was made after three-and-a-half years of research, interviews and surveys on the organization's image.

"We really wanted to make sure what we were hearing was reflective of most of our community," she said. 

"We knew this step would be a big one and that not everybody would be fully supportive, but it’s hard to ignore the data and the changes that have occurred in our community," Murguía added.

The NCLR name had come under criticism from groups on the right, who pointed out that "la raza" means "the race” in Spanish, a reference that was interpreted by some as having racist undertones.

The organization got its original name in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, a reference to an academic concept put forth by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos in the 1930s

Vasconcelos's original idea of "la raza" was meant to unite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples of Latin America as part of one post-colonial identity group.

But Murguía says that image no longer represents Latinos in the United States.

"We’re not the same Hispanic or Latino community we were in 1968," she said. "We are a younger community — six in ten [Latinos] are millennials or younger -- and we’re a more diverse Latino community."

Murguía said the old name "appeared to be outdated" and "to have no resonance with our community."

"More than anything, our name appeared to be a barrier to our mission," she said. 

UnidosUS is the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, with interests in political advocacy and research on issues like tax reform, healthcare, housing and immigration. 

Murguía said the organization and the Hispanic community as a whole have achieved real gains over time in many of those areas. 

"Real progress is achievable, but it takes sustained engagement and it happens not in a moment, but over time," she said.

She pointed at issues like the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance coverage to nearly four million Latinos who previously didn’t have health insurance, and the earned income tax credit as tangible wins for Hispanics.

Rapper Cam'ron On The Importance of Ownership

O.J. Simpson Parole Hearing (Full)

[NBC]

Brooklyn Congressional Reps Demand that 2 Streets Recently Named for Pro-Slavery Confederate Generals be Changed

From [HERE] Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue are on the Fort Hamilton military base near Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. The street names honor pro-slavery Confederate Army Generals. Jackson and Lee both were stationed at the base in the 1840s prior to the Civil War. They also both violated the 1789 military oath of allegiance to “support the constitution of the United States” and to serve “honestly and faithfully” against “enemies or opposers.”

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson graduated from West Point and served in the U.S Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He later took up arms against the United States during the Civil War, leading Confederate forces at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He died of complications from wounds in 1863. Not only was Jackson a traitor, he was also a slaveholder.

Robert E. Lee was also a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican-American War. He later served as superintendent of the military academy and Lincoln offered him command of the U.S. army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee refused the offer and instead became commander of the army of Northern Virginia and later the Confederate General-in-Chief, leading Southern forces at Antietam and Gettysburg. At the end of the Civil War, Lee, a traitor and a former slaveholder, opposed granting Blacks the right to vote. Recently his statue was removed from prominent display in New Orleans.

Brooklyn Congressional Representatives Yvette Clarke, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that the names of these streets be changed. In a letter to Army Secretary Robert Speer they wrote “To honor these men who believed in the ideology of white supremacy and fought to maintain the institution of slavery constitutes a grievous insult to the many thousands of people in Brooklyn who are descendants of the slaves held in bondage.” [MORE]

Federal Court: Uncivilized Texas Must Address Inhumane Prison Heat Conditions

From [HERE] and [HERE] A federal court is ordering the State of Texas to address summer heat conditions at a prison unit northwest of Houston.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has about two weeks to make a plan, ensuring vulnerable inmates are housed in units less than 88 degrees. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he plans to appeal the decision.

The preliminary injunction stems from a lawsuit filed in 2014 seeking cooler temperatures for inmates, citing a spate of deaths in the previous three years.

In 2016, the heat index at the unit surpassed 100 degrees on 13 days and hovered around the 90s degrees for 55 days, the ruling notes. No heat-related deaths have been reported at the unit, but at least 23 men have died because of heat in TDCJ facilities since 1998, Ellison wrote. Intermediary measures are necessary to avoid cruel and unusual punishment, he said.

“… the Court does not order defendants to reduce temperatures to a level that may be comfortable, but simply to a level that reduces the significant risk of harm to an acceptable one,” Ellison wrote.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to appeal the ruling, saying the state has taken significant measures to mitigate the effects of the sweltering conditions.

Inmates are allowed to wear shorts and t-shirts in housing areas during summer months, the ruling notes. They can seek relief in air-conditioned areas, including an infirmary, administration offices, visitation areas, the education department and the barbershop.

But, after a nine-day hearing in June 2017, Ellison concluded the measures are insufficient to combat the risk of serious injury or death in summer months.

In his ruling, the judge quotes Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s famous line about Siberian prisons: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

“Prisoners are human beings with spouses and children who worry about them and miss them,” Ellison continues. “Some of them will likely someday be shown to have been innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. But, even those admittedly guilty of the most heinous crimes must not be denied their constitutional rights. We diminish the Constitution for all of us to the extent we deny it to anyone.”

We discuss the ruling, and what changes lie ahead for inmates at this Texas prison unit, with Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

Per the ruling, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has 15 days to devise a plan to house some 500 “heat-sensitive” inmates housed in living quarters exceeding no more than 88 degrees at the Wallace Pack Unit, located about 70 miles northwest of Houston near Navasota.

The ruling was issued Wednesday (July 19, 2017) by US District Judge Keith Ellison. It also calls for easy access to respite areas for the remaining 1,000 inmates at the unit.